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Oil the Ameiidiiieiil lo Admit Alabama. ^ 



S r E E C II 




HON. JOHN CONNESS, 



OF CALIFORNIA, 

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, JUNE 6, 18C8, 
IN llEPLY TO MR. DOOLITTLE. 



The Senate having under consideration the bill | 
(H. R. No. 1058) to admit the States of North Caro- I 
Una, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, and Ala- 
bama to representation in Congress- 
Mr. CONNESS said: 

Mr. President: There were some things in 
connection with the pending amendment which 
I thought during the discussion yesterday I 
should like to have said, and, perhaps, would 
like to say now, though I am so much the more 
anxious tor the passage of the bill proposing to 
admit those States that I would readily forego 
at any time anything that I might have to say 
if we could come to a vote upon it. Yet, if the 
debate is to go on to the consumption of this 
day or still further, I will trespass upon the 
Senate for a few minutes. 

I regret, Mr. President, very deeply, to wit- 
ness the opposition that proceeds particularly 
from this side of the Chamber to the amend- 
ment offered by the honorable Senator from 
Massachusetts, because I cannot see for the 
life of me a good reason for objecting to the 
admission of Alabama at this time. Of course 
we all differ or are apt to differ, indeed too apt 
to differ, I think, in this Chamber, and partic- 
ularly on our side of it, I will say, upon propo- 
sitions of policy and doctrine. I regret that 
Senators here representing the great national, 
patriotic party of the Union, which maintained 
the war and fought it, who stand now before 
the country and the world under all the respons- 
ibility that can attach to a party engaged in 
conducting a Government, so often ditfer upon 
questions of doctrine and policy. The oppo- 
sition to this amendment in the Chamber comes 
from two classes. One class is ably, actively, 
astutely represented by some of the Senators I 
see sitting before me. I allude particularly to 
the honorable Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
BfcKAi.Ew] and the Senator from Indiana, 
[Mr. Hexuuicks.] Upon all occasions when 
it becomes the interest of the party they rep- 

" / 1 
/ ■ ■ ■' 



resent to advocate their policy, (which, how- 
ever, they do not give much of their time to, 
but attack ours,) they are ever in the fore- 
ground : and their associates on the other side 
of the Chamber permit their leadership, as 1 
think, with grewt good judgment, for they are 
cool, cautious, and able. These leaders, with 
all the other members of their party on the 
opposite side of the Chamber, are agaiiAt this 
amendment. 

They are against the bill ; they are against 
it in whole and in every part. They opposed 
the first reconstruction bill ; they opposed the 
second; they opposed the third; an(l they will 
oppose every proposition which proposes to 
readmit the southern States upon the basis of 
equal suffrage ; and yet honorable Senators ou 
this side of the Chamber allow them often to 
dictate a policy to divide and distribute our 
forces, while they never vote apart. It is of 
no consequence, Mr. President, whether it be 
a legislative or a judicial question that the hon- 
orable Senators vote upon, atrial to determine 
political policy contained in a bill before 
this body, or a trial of the President of the 
United States, they vote conscientiously of 
course, but, wonderfully, vote together. The 
solid phalan.x is never broken. I like them, 
sir ; 1- like wisdom, boldness, perceptive sense, 
and they exhibit all here; but sometimes I 
have been astonished that some of our friends 
did not perceive it and did not know that they 
were the serpent in the garden — they will par- 
don lue for the comparison — who mean to 
please while they mean to destroy, while we 
conscientious folks and legal men are able to 
si)lit a 4air without breaking either side ; and 
sometimes I have been tempted to think that 
the ability to doit, existing here so extensively 
and so certainly, often induces the practice of 
the attempt just to see how it can be done and 
who can do it. 

So, sir, Alabama cannot be admitted with 
the other southern States in the same bill, but 



F3X6 



we are told it must be presented as a separate 
proposition in a separate bill. Mr. President, 
i ask you the question, what Senator is there 
on this side of the Chamber who will refuse to 
vote for the amendment of the Senator from 
Massachusetts admitting Alabama at the same 
time with the other States, who will consent to 
vote for it if it stands alone ? Suppose, as we 
have been told — and this prophecy has been 
made a great many times — that the President 
shall veto the bill now before us and send it 
back here ; suppose that the amendment now 
pending be lost and that a separate bill for the 
admission of Alabama shall also be passed by 
a majority or more and sent to him for his 
signature, will he not return them both with a 
veto ? Will he treat one any better than the 
other? And when the bill for the admission 
©f Alabama standing alone shall be returned 
by him to this body, what Senator who would 
not waive all question and vote for it incor- 
porated with a bill admitting the other States, 
will then vote for it over his veto ? 

Mr. President, can it be possible ; is it true 
at this period and time that there is any Sena- 
tor on what I claim to be the loyal side of the 
Senate — and loyalty has a meaning though it 
is so much used — who will refuse to sustain a 
bill for the admission of Alabama under the 
constitution made in that State, because it is 
either in or out of a bill proposing to admit 
the other States? If it be so, then it only 
proves that as a party, a majority party charged 
with conducting this Government at this great 
crisis, it is a failure ; and, sir, that being the 
case, it deserves to be routed, horse, foot, and 
dragoons, by that party for which I have no 
political respect, led by those astute leaders on 
the other side of the Chamber. 

When my friend from New Jersey [Mr. Fre- 
j-iNGHUYSEx] was on the floor he told us that 
there were Senators here who would not and 
could not vote for this bill if it came back 
with a veto from the President, the amend- 
ment of the Senator from Massachusetts hav- 
ing been adopted ; and my honorable friend 
from Michigan, [Mr. Howard,] who is always 
brave and true, reiterated the opinion, and 
although he was ready to vote for it, it was his 
opinion that that was the real state of the case 
in the Senate ; and many others followed. 
When the debate had taken this turn my 
friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. Buckai.ewJ 
rose and oifered his arguments, and the Sen- 
ator from Indiana [Mr. Hendricks] joined 
him as usual. They said that this wm in the 
nature of a contract. Why, said the Senator 
from Indiana, several times, if not in this 
debate heretofore, what did you mean by sub- 
mitting the question to the peoj)le of Alabama 
if you were not prepared to abide by their 
decision? It was not for the purpose of 
abiding by their decision that we submitted itj 



it was for the purpose of developing a consti- 
tution ; it was for the purpose of organizing 
government; it was for the purpose of organ- 
izing loyalty and allowing that State to be rep- 
resented in this Chamber and to resume all 
her practical relations with the Government. 
Well, sir, in the process of submitting the 
question, it happened that under our law, 
unwisely passed, I think — 1 do not know how 



I voted upon it, and I do not care ; I think, 
however, I voted against it — the requisite num- 
ber of votes was not polled for the constitution 
to result in its adoption. Does that bind this 
• Congress? Did we not make the law? May 
we not amend it? 

Have we not asserted from the beginning 
our entire and complete power over this sub- 
ject? Might we not have admitted Alabama 
without the process that she took at all ? Might 
we not have admitted Alabama, if we chose 
and deemed it worthy of us, under the so-called 
Johnson constitution? Certainly. The power 
was here ; it abides here still ; and we may 
either^amend or change the law, or act, not- 
withstanding the law, as we shall see fit. Why? 
Because we represent the sovereign power of 
this Government and people that maintained 
the standard of the nation and the integrity of 
its Government against rebellion, and because 
we mean to hold fast to that position until the 
entire work is done and well done. Sir, among 
our friends that come to our house to meet 
us, do we raise the question of who shall first 
enter? Who that has a heart and a judgment 
does not welcome all ; and why should we not 
welcome all? 

I will give no time to the question of the 
causes that led to the failure of the vote in 
Alabama. It is enough that it technically 
failed; but it is true, as stated by my honor- 
able friend from Indiana near me, [Mr. Mok- 
Tox,] that there were eighty odd thousand 
votes cast for the constitution ; it is true that 
they have made such a constitution as we 
would choose that they should make ; it is true 
that they ask to be admitted, and that their 
safety demands that they be admitted. If the 
Senate will indulge me at this point, I will 
read some dispatches just received from Ala- 
bama. The first one is addressed to the hon- 
orable Senator from Massachusetts, who has 
offered the amendment, and is in these words: 

MONTGOMKRY, ALABAMA, June (>, 18(53. 

Tho loyalists of Alabama, witli one voice, begScn- 
ators to support your aiucndinent. 
Hon. IIknry Wilson, United Suites Senate. 

This is signed by more than half a dozen of 
the leading men of that State. I will read 
another dispatch received to-day: 

MoNTiiOMKKY, Alaiiama, June (S, 18G8, 

Republicans arc intensely anxious for tho adop- 
tion of Wilson's amendniout. 

Hon. 11. M. Ueynolus. 



Tlie honorable Senator from Perinsylvanift, 
in this discussion, was almost facetious in his 
attacks upon llie reconstruction laws. It is 
bnt what he has iterated and reiterated here 
many times before, though he rarely repeats 
himself; but the lino of discussion has drawn 
him into it. lie said that the better way to 
have done would have been to send an exact 
pattern of a constitution down to these States, 
a kind of a last upon which a political boot 
should be made, and then we should have the 
thing according to pattern. I do not know 
whether his support of the pattern of that kind 
sent by Andrew Johnson down into these States 
when he made his celebrated proclamations, 

Eut this in his head or not. 1 do not know 
ut that that pattern, which particularly and 
prominently allowed every rebel to vote, so 
pleased him that he got the idea of pattern in 
his head from that, and then said what he did 
while up. 

The only conditions that we imposed upon 
the people of the South were conditions which 
became necessary b}' their crimes and falsity 
to good faith and loyalty. Why, sir, it was 
preposterous that a local government could be 
organized in any of those States after the 
war by allowing the men who had laid down 
their arms to take up the ballot and vote, and 
they alone, under which this Government could 
live, and it was as impossible as that devils 
could reign in Heaven, and as unnatural. 
Therefore it became necessary to put the bal- 
lot in other hands ; and the fault, the great 
and grevi^us fault of reconstruction, has been 
that the power of the Government from the 
time the war ceased was not kept closely 
applied to the rebels so that they should not 
be let up until they were taught obt;dience to 
law and to order, respect for property and life 
and the rights of otlier men. But, sir, unfor- 
tunately, in a day of the cruelest misfortune, 
our President, elected by the party that we 
represent here, determined to make a wide 
dltference with us. lie determined to engage 
in the business of reconstruction single-handed 
— no, sir, not single-handed, but without theaid 
of our hands, without the aid of the men who 
had given him his power, but with the aid of 
the rebels of the South, the Democrats of the 
North who had opposed the war, and the plun- 
der-seeking Republicans, wherever they could 
be found, to build up a party that should elect 
him OFSomeone like him for tlmnextfouryears 
President of the United States. That was what 
he undertook to do, and that was why the Sen- 
ator from Wisconsin [Mr. Dooi.itti.k] deserted 
liis party — I was going to say basely betrayed 
i — and joined the President to do. Ah, Mr. 
President, does any one think, can the Senator 
make the simplest creature in the land believe, 
ilr.it if the President had been true to his faith, 
true to his trusb^.to the people, true to his obli- 



gations to the parly that elected him, and gone on 
I with us, the Senator would have left him then? 
I Nay, sir, he would have clutched to his coat- 
tails, he would have still followed the flesh- 
pots of presidential patronage, and he would 
have been here the loudest of the loud pro- 
claiming for .Johnson and reorganized, recon- 
structed liberty in the South ; and we should 
have had some of that physical eloquence that 
he so often gives us specimens of here when, 
with a jiile-driving power, he drives down his 
propositions beneath him, often smashing them 
into pieces, and when, sir, he almost impiously 
— he will excuse my language, but the facts 
justify it — intersperses his appeals to the Sen- 
ate with appeals to Almighty God. 

Mr. President, the honorable Senator pro- 
fesses to be a Christian man, and has often told 
us how much he reveres the Christian religion ; 
but, sir, he has joined idols ; he has aban- 
doned his faith ; he has abandoned the princi- 
ples upon which Christianity is founded and for 
which it was established in the world. If 
Christianity, by its great Master and Teacher, 
was not brought to men of the earth for the 
purpose of defending the weak and lowly, for 
the purpose of lifting them up in the scale of 
being, for the purpose of teaching some of that 
equality on earth which is certain in Heaven, 
then, sir, I undertake to say for myself that it 
is a deception and a snare. The Senator pro- 
fesses the doctrine and violates it shockingly, 
impiously, wickedly, at every turn. He ri.ses 
here and gives us dissertations on the inequality 
of men, the impossibility of tiie negro being the 
equal of the Caucasian. Mr. President, the 
distinction was not made by their Maker. We 
are not told that there are dividing places in 
Heaven for classes and castes and colors and 
shades. There is not a Christian church in the 
world of all the denominations that docs not 
admit them to be upon the same plane; but 
the Senator, while he boasts his Christianity, 
violates its most sacred purposes and princi- 
ples. > 

1 was reminded yesterday when he had nearly 
a mule's load of books around him, that there 
was one which ho might have added with 
advantage to himself. 1 hold it in my hand. 
It is a simple and old book. There are sup- 
posed to be truths in it, and the honorable Sen- 
ator professes to believe them. While he was 
denouncing the inequality of" men and boasting 
it loudly, 1 opened it at a place where a man 
I who was known in his day and generation, ami 
j is not forgotten yet, had spoken. His name 
, was Paul, anil on an occasion when he met 
I the Athenians, who thought themselves the 
j greatest of all the earth, who boasted their 
j superiority and eloquence, and who called 
I every outsider a I)arl)arian or an uncivilized 
j semi-barl)aria!i — they were like the honorable 
1 Senator in everything but that they were great 



in art — Paul stood up among the Athenians 
and spake thus : 

" Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' Hill and said, 
' Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all thing ye are 
too superstitious.' " ****** 

" 'God that made the world, and all things therein, 
seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth 
not in temples made with hands ; 

'"Neither is worshipped with men's hands as though 
he needed anything, seeing hegivethto all, life, and 
breath, and all things; 

" ' And hath made of one blood all nations of men 
or to dwell on all the face of the earth.' " 

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Read the next sen- 
tence. 

Mr. CONNESS. The next sentence, Mr. 
President, the honorable Senator can read, 
and if he will read and study and pay attention 
to the spirit as well as the letter, he will leave 
the rotten faction and party that he has joined 
and come back to the men who have heart and 
blood and courage in advocacy of human right. 

But there is another thing the Senator is in 
the habit of doing when he speaks here; and 
I have heard him do it I may say a hundred 
times. He calls up that great and beloved 
man now gone, our late President, as a witness, 
and he makes him responsible again and again 
for this vilest plan to organize rebellion polit- 
ically. Sir, the man who left his residence 
when his health was failing him and went down 
to the front and witnessed the proceedings 
during the last ten days of the existence of the 
armed forces of rebellion, had his heart and his 
soul in his country's cause too deeply to ever 
trust one of the men who was on the other 
side in that conflict. It is true that he was a 
generous and charitable man, and, like us, 
would not use unnecessary severity against any 
person whatever, not even against his active 
enemies. But think you, sir, that if he had 
lived he would not have guarded with jealous 
care and fidelity, and organized the patriotism 
of the country, and preserved its Government 
so as to make it impossible to be again attacked 
so successfully as it had been? No man can 
doubt that. 

The honorable Senator has treated us time 
and again to what he has called the "Lincoln- 
Johnson policy." "Lincoln-Johnson!" I 
have heard that a great many times from him. 
He used to come up here with a hand-organ 
and grind out ad libihim "the Lincoln-John- 
son policy;" but if Johnson had stayed with 
us he hud never turned musician ! I do not 
know what the honorable Senator's mission is, 
whether it is music, statesmanship, theology, 
or what not. I may have something to say 
about that by and by. 

He has a habit here, too, of speaking of the 
elections whenever through any cause whatever 
in any part of the country there is a scorning 
triumph of the party that he has now joined, 
but ho will permit mc to say, does not honor, 
for deserters always have a character, and it 



abides with them and stays with them like the 
shirt of Nessus ; there is no reorganization or 
reconstruction for them. The man who fails 
his comrades, the man through whom a cause 
is lost, has no friends, and for the best reason 
in the world, he is not worthy of them; and 
there is a common instinct that all mankind 
have,^without the trouble of reasoning, which 
teaches them that very wholesome fact. If 
an election occurs in California, though the 
result was brought about by the shameless acts 
of faction in our own party, by means of which 
the men whom he has joined have made a 
temporary success, he heralds it here again 
ana again and claims that those bad principles 
and those heinous policies that he now stands 
the advocate of have been indorsed. If the 
proposition has been submitted in any one or 
more of the northern States to give the ballot 
to the colored man, and through the monstrous 
and wicked prejudice which the existence of 
that brutal institution of slavery has sown, 
grown and built up among us, the proposition 
be rejected, the honorable Senator comes here 
and speaks loud and claims that it is a victory 
for him and his party! Well, sir, when a man 
or a party boasts of a victory like that, won 
with the seeds of injustice deeply in it, he or 
it has only to wait a little while to be destroyed. 
As sure as right is better than wrong as an 
abstract principle, so sure will any man or 
party binding up within its policies, error, and 
wickedness, fall thereby. 

But the honorable Senator finds nothing in 
the Christian religion to engage tiim as an 
active missionary on the side of right, but he 
has gone out and counted his forces, and he 
calculated with his friend, the President, that 
the Democrats of the North, the rebels of the 
South, and the class that I denominated a^ the 
plunder-seeking Kepublicans wherever they 
are found, would make an overshadowing and 
overpowering party, and he joined it at once. 
Of course, he cannot immediately retreat; he 
has committed himself; but he does not tell 
us of how unfortunate he has been individually 
in his advocacy of these monstrosities. His 
State, not like mine by a local and party feud, 
but upon a fair election, spewed him out of its 
mouth. Its people have not said, "Well 
done, good and faithful servant," but they 
have said, "Go hence;" and I heard — I sup- 
pose it is not true — that the honorable Senator 
was going to I^lorida. • He ought to reiitember 
that that is not the latitude for the Caucasian 
race. I rather think if he were there, par- 
ticularly if the ballot should be maintained in 
the hand of the negro, he would overcome his 
scruples and go back to his old doctrine read 
by the honorable Senator from New Hamp- 
shire to-day and say, "I was mistaken for a 
while; the savage of Africa built up and intel- 
lectually strengthened and born again in 



America is capable of establishing here in the 
tropics a republic that will rival the great Repub- 
lic of the North ;" and I suppose he would add, 
"and of the temperate zone," for I believe he 
always puts that in. I like to be accurate. 

But not a word falls from his lips of how 
his partners have gone from him. When, in 
18G5 he met his party associates in a confer- 
ence in a room not far from here, I remember 
well, before a word was spoken about the 
desertion of Mr. Johnson from his party, that 
Senator's speeches, and I remember well the 
speeches made by his asso(*iate for awhile 
who was a Senator from Pennsylvania, [Mr. 
Cowan,] and I remember well the cooperation 
of the gentle and amiable Senator from Con- 
necticut, [Mr. Dixox.] There were a few more, 
but this trio were the leaders. They were 
evidently the marked and chosen leaders, 
chosen blindly and foolishly by the Presi- 
dent. I remember the speeches they made in 
that conference, and how certain it was then 
that they were deserters, that they intended 
treason to our parly and to our cause. What 
has been the history of every man who went 
with the honorable Senator on that occasion ? 
He might well put tliat hand-organ down on 
some occasion, and go to one of the poets, 
and read thus : 

" When I remember all 

The friends, so link'd together, 
I've seen around me fall, 

Like leaves in wintry weather; 
I feel like one, 

Who treads alono 
Sonic banquet hall deserted, 

Whose lights are fled, 
Who.-;e garlands dead. 

And all but he departed." 
I shall not speak, sir, of the dead ; they 
have passed away; but where, is the Senator 
from Pennsylvania, and where will be the Sen- 
ator from Connecticut, and where will be the 
man who made music for them all? And 
where will he be, sadder yet, in the estimation 
of his countrymen? Where will he be fifty 
years hence? Where will he be ^^lcn a cen- 
tury sliall have come which shall render prac- 
tical on earth some of the teachings of the 
Christian doctrine and m.ake all forget their 
individual power, their superiority where they 
have it, and in place of trying to put their feet 
upon the neck of their fellows, who are already 
too low down, they shall be engaged in lilting 
up — nay, sir, shall have lifted up the lowly — 
where then will his record be? If he shall 
make answer to me he will do it with party 
twaddle, he will do it with that same old instru- 
ment, tiie crank of which he has turned here 
so often, and which has been made to play a 
certain number and order of tunes, and which 
the merest fool in creation can j)lay as well, 
if he be able to turn the crank, as any of the 
great artists that have been known in that 
delightful profession. 



j The honorable Senator says we violated the 
1 1 pledges of pardon that the President gave. 
I The President gave pardons, it is true, but who 
I pardoned him? is there any party in this 
; land that are entitled to respect that have par- 
I doned him for the great crime of deserting us, 
1 that have parduned him for the falsehood 
i spoken when he said to those poor, deluded 
I men in Nashville, "I will be your Moses," 
ij meaning to be understood that he would be 
ij their leader and their light and their strength ; 
and when in detestable contrast with those 
sentiments only a short time after, with our 
good President dead and he in power, in one 
of the rooms of the Treasury building he had 
the audacity and the shamelessness, address- 
ing a number of colored men who called upon 
him, to tell them that they should be protected 
in their right to labor — they should be protected 
in their right to work. Yes, sir; their former 
i masters were to be allowed to make contracts 
with them and to refuse to pay them for their 
labor, and the colored man to whom he gave 
the former promise was to be protected in his 
right to labor without the pay! There is such 
a thing sometimes as justice on earth, and 
sometimes men escape it. Without wishing 
to be harsh to the President, to whom I feel no 
personal ill-will, I think, if he were secured a 
while in the same right to labor, that it would 
be according to a high philosophy, the doctrine 
of compensation, eminently just and deserved. 
The military governor of Tennessee, at Nash- 
ville, holding a temporary place, said, " I will 
be your leader;" the President of the United 
j States, representing all the power of the Re- 
I public, said "You shall be protected in the 
j right to work," and at that time my Christian 
I friend from Wisconsin was engaged in helping 
the President to maintain the latter promise ! 
! He brings in a petition here, signed by a 
I thousand of the white men of Alabama, repre- 
I senting, as he says, "the intellect and moral 
j power" of that country. I do not know about 
the intellect; but if they represent the moral 
power, then there is a certain dignitary, who 
is said to have his chief abode in the infernal 
j regions, who is liie custodian and chief of all 
j that power, and there is no God ! Moral power, 
I sir I What a shocking misuse of terms! Men, 
I who, that the riglit might be secured to buy 
and sell human flesh, bodies and souls eter- 
nally, made war against the only Government 
that otVered security to the liberties of man- 
kind ; men who, in making that war, violaied 
all the usages of honorable warfare, butchered 
those whom they had in their power disarmed 
f^nd overpowered, and made toys of their 
bones ! 

Right here, Mr. President, let me tell very 
briefly an incident of an excursion party, 
l.ong after the battle of Bull Run, and after 
the bones of our poor fellows had whitened on 



the surface of the soil, an excursion party on 
horseback came out from Richmond. Let it 
be spoken but in shame, that they were com- 
posed mainly of what are called ladies ; that 
they wheeled their horses and went back with 
trophies consisting of bones of human beings, 
their country people, the children of the 
same God, who had been slain by their fathers 
and brothers ; and one lady, to be more dis- 
tinguished than the rest, carried a skull orf 
on her riding-whip as a garland and trophy. 
The Senator speaks of the moral power such 
people represent 1 I will not spend any time 
in undertaking to show, nor is it necessary to 
say, that every man of them who signed that 
petition, in all human probability, has a history 
either as bad as or worse than tiiis man Perry, 
fi'om South Carolina; and yet they come here 
to petition, to misstate facts, to denounce their 
fellows, to ask us to reinstate them in power 
that they may proceed to the full completion 
of the work which they failed to do by other 
means. 

Mr. President, let me say before I go further, 
lest any man shall say or think that 1 would do 
a cruel or ungenerous act toward one of these 
persons, that there was no man in the nation 
at the end of the war, and there is no man in 
it now, who is so ready to receive them back 
when they are prepared to come back as 
American citizens, loving the flag, believing in 
the system of government, ceasing to tyran- 
nize over and destroy the men that they the 
other day enslaved, when they shall have come 
to acknowledge that a man from Massachusetts 
or New York may take his money and his 
household gods and go into any State of the 
Union and live in peace and security. But, 
Mr. President, it is not so now ; and this peti- 
tion that the Senator has presented denounces 
such of us as say that it is not so. 

There was in this gallery awhile ago a brave 
fellow who left my State and came here to take 
the fortunes of war for his country just after 
he had left college, and who undertook to set- 
tle in the South. In his character he is as 
gentle as a woman, in his moral and upright 
bearing he is a pattern in society. Ilis very 
lineaments impress you with his nobility. He 
engaged in business ; he has tried to live in the 
South, but he could not do it. To use his own 
words, gentle and truthful as he is, " no stand- 
ard of character, no matter how elevated ; no 
purity of life, no matter how simple and true, 
IS a passport there to any favor. 1 was warned 
to leave again and again. I had determined 
to sell my life dearly if forced to do so, and I 
prepared means of defense in my households 
1 escaped a physical conflict, but finally bad 
to leave." 

Tt is not constitutional, says th<j Scnatorfrom 
Wisconsin ; you are trampling the Constitution 
under foot if you preserve that man in the 



plainest rights of an American citizen ! There 
was a time, whether the Senator believed in it 
or not, when he stood forth as the advocate of 
the opposite doctrine; but the time has come 
when we have but the abandonment of that by 
the Senator, and his constant and oft-repeated 
harangues here. 

When he rose yesterday the first utterance 
he made was that he did not rise to engage in 
this discussion as a party man. No sir, 1 sup- 
pose not. He did not belong to our party ; 
that is certain ; he has not been long enough 
in the other tofcave obtained a status, and so 
he is hanging between earth and heaven polit- 
ically yet. 1 do not know where he will fall ; 
but I know that he will fall ; I know that he is 
falling; he is bereft of that element of moral 
power which he says these petitioners represent 
in the State of Alabama. 

He says the distinguished gentleman who 
recently did not receive the indorsement of 
this body for a high office which he had once 
held, said on a certain occasion, and all their 
leaders say, that they luean first to get power, 
and next, if they do get power, they will 
trample free suffrage under their feet ; they 
will reinstate their style of rule. Mr. Pres- 
ident, if there be one of them so vain as to 
dream earnestly of it, I caution and conjure 
him to remember that the day has passed for 
rebel rule in America. The day has passed, 
as slavery has passed, when its damned instru- 
ments can longer control public opinion. Sir, 
let them undertake to trample under foot, and 
the next great example will make an epoch 
in human history never to be forgotten. As 
Wrong is weaker than Right and and has not 
any of its inherent power ; as Right is true and 
strong and bold, so will the one triumph over 
the other and trample it under its feet. That, 
sir, is where the trampling will be done, and 
the result of the vintage will be the pure wine 
of liberty, unadulterated, vitalizing, good for 
body and soul. 

1 have been at a loss, Mr. President, in 
thinking of it, to imagine to what caste, class, 
party, faction, or sect my friend really belongs ; 
1 mean in his religion ; not while I listened to 
him yesterday, but while I have listened tobira 
for the three years last past in this Chamber. 
I have not gone and made the researches that 
our friend from Massachusetts [Mr. Sumner] 
could have done by turning his finger, and 
brought and spread before me all the systems 
of religion that mankind have known, so that 
I might have found the place of my friend 
from Wisconsin. Having found no place for 
him in the sect to which he professes to belong, 
I went to others, and among the rest I found 
me a book which gave the philosophy of the 
Hindoo religion. There is a great deal in it, 
sir; and I will say here in its behalf and for it, 
that if my friend belonged to it, was in full 



communion*with it, he would sever his present 
party connections and come and seek forgive- 
ness of the men and cause he has betrayed. 

I find that their religion divides their popu- 
lation into four castes or tribes or classes, and 
they are described according to their inherent 
faculties and their fitnesses for life on earth, 
and I suppose for life in heaven. They con- 
sist of the Braiiinen, which is the highest — my 
friend from Nevada, [Mr. Nye,] I have no 
doubt will be deeply interested in this exposi- 
tion, as he is known to be a searcher after 
truth. The next tribe or caste is the Kehlree ; 
the next is the Visya ; and the next and fourth 
and last is the Soodra. The Brahmen consist 
of those who have faculties that give this 
result: " The natural duty of the Brahman is 
peace, self-restraint" — that is bad for my 
friend — "zeal" — if that could possibly be meant 
to be associated with a bad cause, he could 
come iu — "purity" — I will let him judge of 
that for himself — "patience, rectitude, wis- 
dom, learning, and theology;" Do you think 
he belongs there, sir? I should say not. 

The natural duties of the second class are 
" bravery, glory," — a brave man never deserts 
a cause, not even a failing cause ; to use a 
vulgar phrase, he dies iu his tracks ; and that 



is glofious ; and the very next duty of that 
caste is "glory;" then "fortitude, rectitude, 
not to flee from the field" — my friend clearly 
does not belong there, for he did flee from the 
field ; he left us, and he left us when we had 
the mightiest of works to do — "generosity and 
princely conduct." It is not " princely con- 
duct" to flee from the field. 

The natural duty of the third class, or Visya, 
is "to cultivate the land, tend the cattle, buy 
and sell." I do not know that my friend be- 
longs there. I do not know that he has any 
talent for these pursuits. 

The natural duty of a Soodra is servitude. 
In one sense, I think, my friend belongs there. 
He has joined the party devoted to the estab- 
lishment of servitude. But on the whole, having 
discussed that with myself, I concluded that 
my friend could not be put with that tribe or 
class ; and therefore I found no place for him 
in the Hindoo religion. I found he did not 
"belong to the Christian religion, and there was 
no place for him among the Hindoos. He had 
left his party and his country in its greatest 
need, and not having my friend from Massa- 
chusetts at my elbow so that I might carry on 
my investigations further, it simply became 
my natural duty to pray for him. [Laughter.] 



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